Flip Saunders Quotes (326 Quotes)

Part of it is teams that were not very good have gotten better, which makes for a much more competitive conference. What developed for a few years in the Western Conference has now come back to the East, where there aren't really any gimme games.

We have players we are trying to get rest over the next 11 games. But you get into the heat of the battle sometimes and you need a billy club to get them out of the game sometimes because they are so competitive. We might have a few tangles coming down the stretch.

I told the guys, we're going to be a good defensive team because that's your personality, ... What I want you to do is take the same aggressiveness that you bring to your defense and turn it to your offense.

We have to know that they have other guys that are capable. Charlie Bell has played well. T. J. Ford had a pretty good game overall and we've got to continue to find those two. Just do what we normally do. Our philosophy is to contest whatever shot is taken, try to limit three-point shots and rebound the basketball. Those are three things we did.

I think the number one thing with young players, you got to get them to play hard. When you step on the court, they don't check your paycheck to see how much you make, and they don't check your ID to see how old you are.

I think what we can do now is we can change our personality. Defense can carry us at times. But I thought in the fourth quarter, our offense, we executed. To score 28 points down the stretch in the fourth quarter that's pretty impressive.

I thought, 'You're coming to a team that just won a championship and was five minutes away from winning another,' so your question is how receptive will they be to what you want to do,

I got to know him when he was a player and he had season tickets right next to our bench. I didn't know him just as a season-ticket holder but as a friend. It's a great loss to the sports world and Minnesota. He always had a smile on his face and cared about kids. He always took time to sign autographs and talk to kids and try to help them.

Any time you take a job where a team won the championship and got within five minutes of winning another, you wonder, how are they going to accept you But they've been very open to coaching, very open to doing whatever we've asked.

When Ben struggles, sometimes that motivates him at the defensive end. He gets the attitude that if I'm not going to score, then you aren't going to score.

He was trying to miss it. He was trying to hit it off the back of the pin to no avail.

When I watch film, they played zone, ... They just didn't call it zone.

The bottom line is, he's going to score. What you can't let him do is get into that 40-point range. You have to make him a volume scorer -- what he's done now is score without taking a lot of shots. We've got to make him work more, offensively and defensively.

We have the ability to get by without him, but he's going to want to play. That's how he is. I don't anticipate anything holding him back from playing, and playing a lot of minutes.

The starters have always been a fan vote and Vince has probably gotten more votes for the last seven years almost than anybody that's played the game. He had a lot of votes this year.

I was more concerned coming in with the defense. I feel in time, we're going to be able to do preparation to be effective offensively. Let's make sure we don't lose our identity defensively.

Carlos works extremely hard on defense. He is big and extremely strong. Now he is starting to understand where the help is coming from. He is learning how to pressure his man into the help, and he isn't feeling like he's out there on an island so much.

When you take a team like Milwaukee that can really score and you hold them to 74 points your team defense is doing something. That's the staple of our team.

I think everyone is getting confidence in Mo. He makes spectacular plays at both ends of the court. It's just the basic ones that he needs to work on. That's the frustrating part.

There's always an energetic bounce - whether good, bad or indifferent - because a new voice, a new energy comes in. Anytime a coach takes over a team, there's always that initial excitement that carries over to the team.

It's not always about how many points they score. I thought our bench really gave us a lift tonight in a lot of different ways.

The first game back after a West Coast trip is always dangerous. I thought we had terrible energy and terrible passion in the first half. We seemed very disinterested.

I'm pretty comfortable right now. There're still a lot of things that can happen. You always continue to look and see what's available, and I think you wait. There will be things that shake out here in the next few days, I'm sure.

That I liken to players that are extremely disciplined and players who know their roles. They don't try to play out of character. That shows something from Day One about the basketball intelligence of the whole team.

I'd say that 37 points, nine assists and one turnover make a pretty good statement for the All-Star game. He felt good tonight, and when he feels that good, we're just going to let him go.

Yeah, I knew it was time to get him out when he did that.

You're happy. It's one of the moments where you end up really happy or really sad.

One of the reasons I played him a lot, I thought it was better for him to be occupied than to sit and think. And considering his circumstances, not sleeping much last night after hearing about it, he played pretty good.

Our division was closed with 20-something games to go. The conference was closed with 10 or 12 games to go, so everyone turned their attention toward out west and the chase that was happening out there.

Rip did a great job and Redd didn't have a lot of breathing room. One of the reasons we aren't a big fouling team is that we don't produce a lot of steals. We don't jump out and we don't gamble. We play position defense. That's why so often our man-to-man looks like a zone. We try to make teams beat us over the top and contest every shot.

It was intense. The players love to compete. The Spurs love to compete against big teams just like us. It was a good game to watch.

They had guys who looked like they were the Bud Light Daredevils going off the trampoline. One time it looked like a volleyball (match) where one guy fakes it and the next guy goes up and spikes it. They were all over the rim.

I thought for playoff situations that was maybe the most important, to have home court in the Eastern Conference. With the way that it's set up, 2-2-1-1-1, I think home court becomes extremely important.

I want to win. My thing was not what this team has done in the past, it's what we have an opportunity to do in the future. So, my decision came pretty easy.

This is going to be a great game for the fans. It's going to be a competitive game. But I don't know how much bearing it will have for either team down the road. I mean, if we go out and dominate them, I don't know what bearing that would have come playoff time, and same thing the other way.

We had 30 assists, and that shows you are playing team basketball. We share the ball.

I thought offensively we were very anxious. I told our guys that offensively we wanted to do it too quick. We wanted to win big right away.

We cannot exert so much energy. People said at one point, 'Chasing 70 games' - or you chase something, then all of a sudden at the end you've got nothing left. We're a team where if we have energy, we can beat anybody. If we don't have energy, we can be beat by anybody. We can't put ourselves in a situation where we're playing some of these guys 38-39 minutes.

Cato was out of his boot (protecting his injured right ankle). He was shooting and jogging. He's still at least a couple of weeks away (from being able to practice).

It's incentive to get days off (to rest players) and preparation for coaches. Any time you can get into a playoff situation and get a three- or four-day rest, you can get back to your basics with some good practices.

I think what happens is that experience takes hold as the series progresses, that's usually what happens. Whether there are adjustments to be made or how you react after a win or a loss. Sometimes, those young guys don't know any better, when they haven't had experience.

The positive was we defended down the stretch. That's what we're going to have to do when playoff time comes.

When you get 30 assists, it shows you are playing team basketball, ... This league is about finding where the mismatches are and exploit the weaknesses.

I still think he's very talented. He could play 12 or 13 years in our league.

I've been impressed with him since Day One. At times, when I don't play him, I always go home at night, sit and watch the film and try to find ways why I didn't play him.

You have to understand that the Grizzlies compete hard, and mental fatigue and mental mistakes happen. But we did not want them to have the ball in their hands to win the game.

In pro sports, you want to win, not only now but down the road. If somebody does something, is it going to affect your ability to win down the road You make your decisions based on that.

I was really fortunate in the past five months to wait and evaluate situations. I was going to wait and find the right situation to walk into.

It's natural. We're in a very different situation than a lot of teams. A lot of teams, the reason they play their bench is because they don't like their fourth and fifth guys that much. I like my fourth and fifth guys. That's why our bench doesn't get the minutes some of the other benches get. You have a tendency to go to a comfort level.

This was a three-game swing. We get an extra win and they get an extra loss.